The architecture of high-performance Internet routers has advanced in the last several years to provide increased performance in routing ever-greater volumes of network traffic. It is not uncommon for a router to support numerous protocols as well as several control applications for configuration and maintenance of the router tables, protocols, and network policies. These advances have increased the complexity of the router such that the efficient management of the router's configuration is critical for reliable network performance.
The configuration of a router is typically managed by a centralized system configuration database residing on the router. The contents of the configuration database control the operation of the router, and manipulation of the contents of the configuration database are accomplished using a management interface, such as a command line interface (CLI). In a traditional router architecture, the CLI has full access to the system configuration database through a configuration manager process, and is intended to be the primary method of access for system professionals. The CLI can be used not only for configuration commands, but also for other interactive commands that control the operation of the router, e.g. commands to start up or shut down specific applications or processes.
Another commonly used management interface to the configuration of the router is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). SNMP is a protocol that governs network management and monitoring of network devices and their functions and is documented in Request For Comment (RFC) 2570, Introduction to Version 3 of the Internet-Standard Network Management Framework, authored by the Network Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (ETF), and published by the Internet Society in April, 1999. Yet another more recently developed management interface to the configuration database of the router is based on the Extensible Markup Language, or XML. An XML-based network management interface typically uses XML to encode communication data that was entered by a network administrator via a graphical user interface (GUI), and provides a mechanism for transmitting the complex data that is used to manage networking devices to the configuration database.
It is not uncommon for certain applications and protocols on a router to allow access to their corresponding configuration data by all three of the above-described network management interfaces—CLI, SNMP, and XML. In fact, a network administrator could enter different CLI or SNMP commands that accomplish the identical configuration change on a given router. Maintaining the router to recognize all of the different management interface commands for all of the various applications and protocols that the router supports can be difficult, requiring numerous updates to data such as SNMP management information base (MIB) definitions, CLI command trees, or XML tags. Furthermore, separate backend processes must be maintained for all management applications and protocols, further complicating the router.